


a collection of shadows

by ladyrose (orphan_account)



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Arthur has TB still but lives, Betrayal, F/M, Family Drama, Gen, Historical, Other, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-17
Updated: 2019-05-26
Packaged: 2020-01-15 08:47:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18495490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/ladyrose
Summary: Dutch isn’t the same man they knew.Hosea gives them a chance to leave the life they made for something better and Arthur shoulders the role of new leader.Old friends become new enemies. The past is harder to shake than they think.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is actually a completed fic. Sharing the first chapter to gauge how well it’ll go. 
> 
> My tumblr is ‘morgan-arthur’ if you have a question or comment about this au

The man rode loose, slouching in his saddle. Collar upturned against the wind and hat brim low, he nudged his horse along carefully through the muddy road leading north outside of Harper’s Falls. 

A heavy downpour had come sometime early that morning. The storm clouds, blocking out any sunlight, had fooled him into a late rise and he nearly scrambled for all of half an hour trying first to remember where he was, and second, why he was there.

There had been talk of flooding south of town in the areas settled lower near the river. The hotel clerk, watching the street from the window, had told him as such as he came down the stairs in twos. Though his business was in the other direction entirely, the roads themselves proved almost impassable, and the trip back colder and far more wet than he would’ve cared for. 

He went into town mostly because Charles and Sadie had asked him to. The latter pausing in stoking a dying fire to tug him aside and prod him sternly in the chest. 

“We can’t keep runnin’ blind,” Sadie had whispered, ducking her head to meet his eyes when he looked away. “We need to know what’s going on, Arthur. Hosea wouldn’t just say _nothing_. Especially if it’s _you_.”

He had considered it. Then Charles had joined him later that same afternoon. A bowl of something decidedly beige in one hand and a pewter cup balanced against his knee with the other.

“What’re we doing, Arthur?” He had asked. It felt rhetorical. He had brought the bowl to his lips and wasn’t even looking at him, so Arthur hadn’t answered at first. Leaned back against the wall of the empty cabin and lit a cigarette in favor of riddles. Then Charles looked at him sidelong and the meaning was understood.

“I’ll ride out tomorrow,” Arthur sighed. 

Charles had smiled.

Sadie had seemed pleased the rest of the day.

He couldn’t be angry at them for it.

When he got into Harper’s Falls the next day, there _had_ been a letter for one Tacitus Kilgore. Arthur opened it on the spot. It hadn’t been from who he’d expected though. He ran a hand along the ‘J.T.’ on the back of the envelope and tearing the letter free, frowned at Trelawney’s swirling script, reading the letter twice:

_My Dear Brother,_

_May this letter find you well. At the moment, me and the wife are reading the book you gifted me! Truly a masterpiece. The author is not one of my favorites, However, an exception can be made for this. Each chapter has kept my interest piqued so far. We shall see if we cant finish it by the time you visit for holiday!_

_Send my well wishes to your wife. She is surely going to have the little one before your visit, yes? All of my prayers are with you two For so exciting a time. Elizabeth insists I add for you to make sure she’s getting all the rest and doting she needs, but knowing you, your missus won’t be in want for anything._

_Let mother and father know all is well, as we don’t think my letter will Arrive to them in good time. You know how mother gets._

_Lend me another book at any time as we’re always looking for new things to read. On another note, let me know what you like and we’ll send some too._

_With affection,_

_J._

_(p.s. it was this time last year, wasn’t it, that we were in forkstown? how time has flew)_

To a prying eye, nothing would seem out of the ordinary. Though Arthur knew Josiah long enough to recognize that the wording and cadence seemed off for the man, and he had took it back with him to the hotel to stew over the rest of the evening when it struck him. 

Josiah and he had a code. They only used it once on one of his harebrained schemes—an elaborate holdup in Forkstown, a little place back east—and it was painfully simple to crack compared to the others he concocted. All the recipient had to do was write in order every capital letter within the body of the letter and closing itself. If done well, should the letter get lost, anyone else reading wouldn’t find anything odd about it.

Arthur grabbed his journal from his satchel, flipping to an empty page and began transcribing the letters. The ‘ _M_ ’ in ‘May.’ The ‘ _A_ ’ in ‘At.’ Until a sentence was formed:

_MATTHEWS SAFE  
LAY LOW_

He stares at it a moment longer and frowns. Tucks it in the back of his journal and returns both to his bag. 

The letter raised more questions than it gave answers. Namely, why Josiah was being pulled into their mess in the first place and what Hosea could possibly be getting into that Josiah felt the need to say he was ‘safe.’

By the time Harper’s Falls was nothing more than its single church spire, looking as though it were nothing more than a needle risen from the ground, the sun found its way from behind the clouds casting lazy rays of pale light onto the hilly country below. Arthur pushed Luca into a gallop, and the remainder of the way tried to ignore the letter at his side.

Charles and Sadie greeted him when he arrived to the cabin. They stood on either side of the door like a pair of sentries, watching him dismount, roll his shoulders, and step past them inside.

They followed him in wordlessly while he shed his coat, nodding gratefully to Susan as she folded it near the fire, and greeting Abigail and Tilly as they sat near the back of the house with a box of sewing material between them and a napping Jack on a pile of blankets at his mothers feet.

They let him crouch to warm his hands for all of five minutes before Sadie cleared her throat, and sighing, he leaned back and looked up at the pair.

“There _was_ a letter. From Josiah. He says Hosea’s safe and to lay low.”

“What do they want from Josiah?” Charles asked, and Arthur shrugged.

“I was wonderin’ the same thing. Answers probably. And if we lay any lower we’re gonna to be in the ground.”

“He knew where to find us,” Sadie announces. “Dutch and Micah might too.”

“If he spoke with Hosea, Hosea probably told him our route. I don’t think Dutch and Micah would know.”

Sadie hums in acknowledgement, dropping on the stool beside him and worrying at her lip. Between the time of the split to now, they would’ve been on the road for three months, though in that time it felt more like a very long dream than a reality. Over twenty years of his life, and suddenly it meant nothing. Their triumvirate and the kingdom they built going up in flames over a trolley accident, a concussion, and a week long of bedrest.

Nobody could have foresaw how serious Dutch’s injury was just like how nobody could have foresaw just how much it changed him. The tangible shift of loyalties when Hosea assumed position of temporary leader, this new sort of reckless abandon that spurred all their plans, Micah’s accusations of what transpired while Dutch was down. A cold, uneasy feeling settled somewhere between the bottom of Arthur’s spine and the pit of his stomach.

Standing, he said, “We’ll have to split ourselves soon. Running as a unit just makes us easier to track.”

“Molly’s going to be delivering soon,” Charles said quietly. “We ought to wait, at least until the baby is here.”

“I agree,” Sadie nodded. “Buy us time to get more money in our hands too.”

“Sure.”

Feeling returned to his hands in sharp spikes as he peered out what remained of the back window of the cabin, watching as John and Lenny helped Pearson and Uncle prepare an elk on a makeshift table of a split log. Mary Beth, Karen and a very pregnant Molly were going about rehanging laundry rescued from rain on a line running from an oak to a post beside the house...

_What would they do?_

Molly would have the baby, they’d have more money and then they’d go their separate ways, but Arthur would be lying if he said he’d thought that far ahead.

They’d sever the only ties they had, go out in the world with a frayed string, and try to tie a new one. It might work.

It would _have_ to.

Maybe, in waiting, they’d have a better chance. But maybe too, they’d have time to figure out where they stood in a world rapidly changing. 

The day they left, Uncle had said, “ _So, Morgan Gang’s in full swing now, are we?_ ”

And Arthur had scowled at the name. Said, “ _We ain’t a_   _gang anymore. We’re surviving_.”

Until they reached this Faceless Future, that’s all they would have to do.

Survive.


	2. Chapter 2

“Can I talk to you, boys?”

Hosea and Arthur had been sharing a pot of coffee, watching steam rise off the swamps behind Shady Belle in the early morning when Molly rounded the side of the house still in her nightgown. She fisted the shawl around her shoulders, bunching up the pale blue fringes in a show of nerves, not quite meeting any of their eyes.

Arthur thought it odd.

Hosea only smiled and nodded, shifting to allow her to sit with them.

“Always, Miss O’Shea.”

She sat. Took in a few uneven breaths. Then said so quickly, it was nearly lost in the lilt of her voice, “I’m pregnant.”

Arthur choked mid swallow.

Hosea’s smile faltered only a second.

“Are you sure?”

“Positive,” Molly said, eyes growing misty. “I talked to Abigail and...the signs are all there. The signs _were_ all there, I...” another shaky exhale, eyes shutting against a memory. “I knew for awhile. Was going to tell Dutch before, but he...he was bedridden, and...”

She trailed off helplessly and Hosea’s smile disappeared into a look of concern, mirroring Arthur’s almost exactly.

“He’s always going on about that bounty of his,” she continued. “I know he won’t want to bring a child into the world, let alone his own. And...and I _know_ Micah’s been in his ear saying...things.”

She looks Arthur square in the eye as he feared she would and he finds he can’t hold it any longer than two heartbeats.

“Arthur. I _know_.”

When Dutch hadn’t woken that morning everyone took it as could be expected, retreating into their own private worlds of worry though Molly took it especially hard. Her grief had been something raw and unbridled. And seeing as the diplomacy between her and the other girls wasn’t at its highest, all Arthur could do was check on her every now and again and remind her she had a place with them there.

It was a peace offering and a friendly gesture. Though _one_ among them and one only, for reasons Arthur hadn’t understood, took it upon themselves to make it out to be something it wasn’t.

Micah’s sneer, something wolffish and predatory needled at the back of his mind.

_Figured you to be more into dark haired women, Morgan._

_Never struck me that you’d favor redheads_.

Once, and this was after Dutch had outwardly healed, he saw Molly out the corner of his eye looking around for something—her journal, he learned later—and bumped into Micah and Dutch on the front porch of the abandoned mansion.

 _He’s over there with John, Miss O’Shea_ , he hears him snicker.

Arthur tenses.

John notices, with a quirk of an eyebrow, immediately. Their conversation pausing awkwardly. 

 _Who?_ Dutch’s voice. _Arthur?_

 _Shut up, Micah_ , Molly had snapped. _Or I’ll shut you up myself._

Micah only responded with a chuckle.

Now, she’s grown quiet.

Unnervingly so.

“Comes with carrying a baby sometimes _,”_ Abigail said when Sadie had voiced her similar concerns. “It hits you different. That you’re gonna be having to look after something so helpless.”

Sadie had dipped her head in understanding and dropped the matter.

Arthur thought that would’ve been the end of it, though he should’ve known better.

The next day, Lenny had disappeared after breakfast with a word about a lead he had. At least that’s what Uncle _thought_ he said he was off to do. Arthur had prickled at all of it, pacing the cabin until Susan snapped at him to quit stepping in the dust pile she swept and to get out, and then he found himself outside, running a brush along Luca while watching the road like a fretting mother hen.

He wondered briefly if Dutch had ever felt this stressed keeping John and him out of trouble, or the gang well under radar. Luca tossed his head when Arthur’s brush went unfocused through a knot in his mane, and muttering an apology, Arthur decided to focus on one thing at a time. The road, it would be.

Lenny came barreling up maybe an hour later, jumping down from his saddle as his horse was midstride and making a beeline for Arthur with a wide grin, ignoring the vexed look on the other man’s face.

“There’s a bank coach coming through these parts within the week.” He says breathlessly. “The storm delayed it.”

“Where’d you hear it?”

“The post office in Harper’s Falls sold me some information, and just this morning in Newton, where it’s required to check in. And I kept my head down, before you ask. I made like I was checking for mail, paid the guy, and he told me.”

Arthur can’t help the smile or the swell in pride that follows. Lenny had always reminded him of himself at twenty two, though, he mused privately, Lenny was perhaps a quicker learner. He came a long way in the way of following a lead and proposing a plan. Running a hand along his jaw, Arthur nodded.

“Sure, we can follow it. Can’t turn it down in the state we’re in, can we?”

“Can’t say we can. When should we go?”

“Tomorrow. Early. I’ll tell the others.”

And before long, Charles and John are agreed to go. Arthur finds Sadie several feet from the house, her saddle on one knee and a jar of polish at her feet. She greets him without looking up and he feels more than anticipates there’s something she has on her mind to unleash on him.

“Lenny’s got a lead on a coach comin’ through Newton. Bank coach. We’re heading out tomorrow, you riding?”

“Who’s we?”

Arthur blinks.

“Charles, Lenny, John, and me.”

“Figured,” the lid is returned to the jar and nudged aside with a foot. “Think I’ll stay. Thank you.”

“Now what’s this then, huh?”

“What’s _what_?”

“ _You_...” Arthur stammers, fidgeting under Sadie’s half amused half forced look of innocence. “You never didn’t want to ride before...Everything okay?”

“Oh, everything’s _fine_ , Mr. Morgan. Why don’t you ask Abigail to go? Or Karen? Tilly? They can shoot real fine too, you know...”

They stare at each for a long minute before realization dawns on him, slowly and with a nameless feeling of dread.

Sadie watches it play across his face. Her smirk growing into a full blown smile. Hopeful and teasing, and... _no_.

Folding his arms, he tells her as such.

“Why not?” She asks. “Dutch was the _Same. Way_. He had extra guns the entire time and didn’t even invite them along on the smaller runs. Riddle me that, Arthur, why is that?”

“I-I don’t know! Who’s going to stay here with the others if you all run around playing outlaws?”

“Nobody’s _playing_ anything,” Sadie says shortly. “You, best of all, know there’s no room for games. Not now.”

“So what are you proposing?”

“I’m _proposing_ that if we’re plannin’ on splitting up in the near future, we need all hands working. Or learning.”

“Okay...”

“ _And_ you heard what Abigail said. I think if Molly learns her way around a rifle or two then maybe...” Sadie stops herself abruptly, stoops to gather up her things and hesitates.

“That night you, Dutch, and Micah found me was the worst night of my life. It just...feels better, you know. Knowing you can defend yourself.”

Arthur sighs.

Nods. Once.

“Okay,” he repeats.

“Okay? You trust me?”

“With my life, Mrs. Adler. Scary as it is.”

She snorts at that, stepping around him to head back towards the house.

“Just remember what Josiah warned us, Sadie.” He calls to her back. “Lay low.”

”Any lower and we’ll be in the ground, Arthur, a wise man once said that.” She laughs.

Arthur was fairly sure there was nothing wise about the man that once said that. There also wasn’t an idea or even a seed to water on how to lead in that man either. 

“What do you have me out here doing, Hosea?” He muses out loud to treeline.

His answer comes in the wind carding through the leaves and a crow somewhere in the distance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had a short chapter between this one and the next of Sadie teaching Molly and Mary Beth how to shoot and the ladies planning a thing all their own, but cut it out for length purposes. I might put it up on my tumblr if anyone is that interested. But they’ll play a larger role in the bigger plot later. 
> 
> Also, thanks for the kudos thus far ❤️ Let me know what you think of this in the comments or over on my tumblr at ‘morgan-arthur’


	3. Chapter 3

The train that went through those parts connected, on either side of them, the towns of Harper’s Falls and Newton. While the line itself was some ways from where the group camped, the wail of its horn came faithfully, hauntingly, across the plains every morning before the sun rose.

Arthur used it as a means of time telling. The minute he hears the horn, he rolls himself upright and goes to wake John, Charles, and Lenny.

The plan was to camp just outside of Newton on the western end to catch the coach as it was leaving the town. That way, the riders would have done their necessary check ins, and no suspicion would arise as it would should the four descend on their payout prematurely, falling into the avoidable trap of having lawmen coming down their way searching for a coach that never gave word on its location.

His hands fly about in the meager light of a lantern, throwing a spare shirt here and his knife there, and they linger over his journal for a time before he’s pulling Josiah’s letter free again, almost magnetically.

Obviously, nothing had changed. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for. The code wouldn’t twist into something different. Josiah’s handwriting wouldn’t turn into Hosea’s, there’d be no answers or indication as to what Dutch, Micah, Javier, and Bill were doing. _Thinking_ , even.

_Matthews safe._

_Lay low._

His eyes go to the date at the top, and he frowns.

The time stamp was two weeks ago.

It could’ve been put off on a delay due to the storms, or maybe this was more of Josiah’s code. Maybe, and Arthur didn’t like this thought at all, it had passed more hands than it was intended.

Shaking that thought, he returned the paper to the journal and buried both under his bedroll in the cabin. More pressing matter required his full attention and the last thing he needed was distractions.

“It’s gonna be a clear day,” Charles announces as they gather at their horses, early morning fog dissipating to golden sunrise.

“Fine day for making some money,” Lenny adds cheerfully, playfully clapping a hand on the shoulder of a still half asleep John.

“I better be able to retire on this,” John declares, and then, muttering as he swung himself up on Old Boy, “waking me up at some godforsaken hour—“

“Now, now, Marston. You ought to get used to waking early. Your future farm won’t run itself,” Arthur smirks, and John rolls his eyes.

“I told you, that’s Abigail’s dream.”

“Happy wife, happy life. It’s gonna be your dream too, before you know it.”

John gives him a look, but doesn’t snark back like he would’ve before. Arthur had noticed, subtle but there, after the incident with Bronte, that John seemed to change. He grew softer around both Jack and Abigail. Less prone to venomous outbursts and lofty, unfiltered opinions. It was about damn time. Abigail deserved no less, Jack either. Especially after the year long stunt John had pulled on them both. But that was neither here nor there, and that part of the past was as foreign to them as the rest of those days running as van der Linde’s. So for now, Lenny led. The others followed.

They reached Newton when the sun was about a quarter of the way in the sky, made a quick camp as planned, and returned to town, dispersing in their respective roles.

While Lenny went to the post and Charles to the general store, John and Arthur found an empty bench outside of the saloon where lips were sure to be the loosest and most honest. They settled in, folded their arms against the chill, and listened.

“—and I’m glad for it,” a particularly loud voice rose among the rest, nearest the door. “My brother in law said that man was ruthless as they come.”

“Where did you come from,” implored another voice, “that you never heard of him, Jacob?”

“Alaska.”

A beat of silence and then a table full of raucous laughter.

“And to think it’s just now noon,” John grumbled, then, squinting up the road where Charles figure was descending the store front steps, “This doesn’t look good...”

“I wonder how long they’ll keep him for,” the voice returned. “Or if he’ll swing.”

“Nah, I think they’ll keep him alive. He helped a lot of folks back in the day. He’s got those older supporters, you know. And he didn’t run alone. But you better believe Dutch van der Linde won’t see the light of day anytime soon, that’s for certain.”

Arthur sat up straighter, eyes finding Johns, blown wide.

“What...?”

“Heard something interesting in the store,” Charles is saying before he’s even up the steps, and then quieter. “Dutch was arrested in Saint Denis a couple of days ago. Papers haven’t even picked up on it yet.”

“What else are they saying?”

“Someone turned him in. There was this big showdown and three men that had been with him escaped.”

“Three?” Arthur hisses. “There were five of them. Hosea, Dutch, Micah, Bill, and Javier. Ones missing.”

“That’s what they’re saying,” Charles says. “Three.”

The noise in the saloon died down behind them into a buzzing chatter as all three considered this new information. Arthur scrambling to connect the dots to no avail. The chief concern and most likely on the tip of his tongue, though John beats him to it.

“Someone must’ve died,” he says. “ _Shit_...maybe it was Micah.”

“It could be anyone.”

“Or it couldn’t be,” Arthur says firmly. “We don’t know what happened, and guessing won’t do anything about it. We’re not out the fire just yet.”

“Why aren’t we? Dutch is out the picture now.”

“And three got away. Who’s the three?”

The air around them seemed to thicken at the inevitable question. Newton suddenly feeling as though their backs were exposed to something snakelike and shadowy. The glances of people walking past suddenly feeling as though there were second away from being recognized as former van der Lindes, as unlikely as it all would be.

Dutch had told him once, that people tend to make their worst judgement under influence of alcohol, peers, and fear. Had they been younger, had Molly not had been pregnant, maybe they could’ve afforded to start running again. But the reality was, they couldn’t. Arthur looked at each of them, at Charles and John and said, “We’re putting our eggs in one basket at a time. This coach first. What the hell is going on in Saint Denis second.”

The three of them make their way up towards the post office then if only to do something besides sitting and wondering. Worrying. Then wondering some more.

The post office was a small building on the north side of town between a pharmacist and the sheriffs office.

They stop outside the pharmacist.

Lenny comes out not fifteen minutes later, spots them and makes his way over, handing Arthur a slip of paper.  
“Tomorrow morning.” He says.

Arthur nods.

Tomorrow morning.

That’s how long they had until they had to face that this thing was well and truly over. No longer in flames, but in ashes.

“Tomorrow morning.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter warnings: 
> 
> \- paragraph break four, detailing a time John got an infection from a wound
> 
> \- there’s no blood mentions because I can’t but someone takes an arrow to the shoulder, nothing in this fic is graphic tbh the author has a weak stomach

As many times as he’s stood toe to toe with death, stared down a barrel, suffered for a wound that just wouldn’t heal, he never flinched.

But then, there’s Lenny.

Once, there had been John.

Two years into the gang and he and John had been separated from Hosea and Dutch. John had been grazed in the leg, and neither had given much thought to it until the wound grew infected and the smell near unbearable.

And Arthur hadn’t the least idea what to do.

He had wrapped John in his coat and his horses blanket and left him at the mouth of some cave with a gun and a blazing fire to sweat it out while he went for help, teeth shattering all the while. From cold or worry, he couldn’t remember.

Somehow John pulled through. Through youth or luck, or a combination thereof on his part and Arthur’s.

But Arthur’s older now.

He decides he won’t leave Lenny.

The road leading out of Newton was flanked on either side by dense forest. It’s under this guise of shadow that they waited. The plan was to descend on the coach quick and clean. They’d split up, Lenny and Arthur, John and Charles, and regroup at the camp.

That was the plan, though in life and all things really, one can plan out something to the very fibers that holds it together and the whole thing could still unravel.

The coach came, two riders at each side and one gun beside the driver. Arthur led the charge, coming from the front. The gun up top, a young man no older than twenty had cursed, fumbling with the rifle balanced across his lap, and swiveled as John got one of the riders in the shoulder with an echoing report.

Everything happened quickly.

Lenny came flying down from the forest behind John like Bellerophon atop a sabino Pegasus. What in some novel would’ve been a grand entrance and effective given his elevation over the coach. But Arthur saw it before he could stop it. Shouted it later than what was helpful.

“Lenny, _wait_!”

The driver, now ducking down, gave the gun beside him the vantage he needed. In a moment of awful clarity, the young man twists towards Lenny and pulls his trigger.

Lenny falls.

Maggie rears.

The rifle—filled with shot, Arthur realizes in relief—did little in the way of lethal damage, though it sent Lenny’s horse bolting, and Lenny groaning and clutching at his legs in the tall grass along the road.

Arthur swears under his breath, turns and fires a warning precariously close to the young man’s shoulder at the same time an arrow finds its target on the same spot.

Charles shoulders his bow and disappears behind the coach with the other rider in tow, low threats and orders to open the locked box emanating from him just beneath the stuttered pleas of his fearful assistant.

Arthur, in the meantime, finds himself moving automatically. Swinging himself off his saddle and racing towards Lenny with an eye still on the coach.

“We’re clear here!” Charles yells from the back. “What are we doing, Mr. M?”

Arthur hesitates.

Lenny propped against one arm, the other aiming up towards the now ghost white driver and groaning rider trying to awkwardly break the arrow without causing anymore pain than necessary...

He _hesitates_.

“Mr. M!” John snaps. “Any day n—”

“ _We’re not him_!” Arthur shouts over the blood in his ears. “Get the money and get gone!”

 _Get the money and get gone_.

He sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose and prods at the fire.

“I know you’re awake.”

Lenny flinches. Doe eyes catching his in the firelight and glowing like twin coals.

“H-how?”

“You stopped snorin’, for one. Breathed different. You _listen_ when you’re out here. It could save your life.”

Lenny nods, chews at his lower lip.

“I’m sorry, Arthur.”

“Wasn’t your fault, kid.”

“Did we get the money?”

“Charles and John got it, yeah. We did alright.” A beat of silence, then, “you hungry?”

“A little. Where are we?”

“Hell if I know,” Arthur mutters, perusing his satchel before settling on a can of peaches and a cigarette. “Not too far outside of Harper’s Falls. How’s that leg holdin’ up?”

“It’s alright,” Lenny shrugs. He accepts the can with a bashful ‘thanks’ and falls into a silence Arthur recognizes immediately. John had it that day they were holed up in that cave, and like then, he waits until Lenny puts a name to it first.

He finds he doesn’t have to wait hours as he did with John.

“Are you mad at me?” He asks around a mouthful of peaches.

“No. You got us in on a good lead. Got scratched up for it, but everyone made it out alive.”

“Everyone?”

Arthur swallows.

Lights his cigarette.

“Everyone.”

“What did you mean when you said ‘we’re not him,’?”

“Things changed.”

Lenny stills in chewing, watching him take a long drag before asking softly.

“He wouldn’t have. Would he?”

And suddenly Arthur is back in that little canoe. Watching in horror as Bronte is pushed out and the man he wanted nothing more than to make proud, lifts himself on the dock in stony silence. There was a time when he’d ask the same thing, maybe. 

“Things changed,” Arthur repeats, exhales through his nose, and watches the smoke curl above him like a hundred silver-blue moths towards the moon.

* * *

 

They arrive back in camp a day later to no sign of John or Charles.

That and a baby.

Molly’s baby. Her _son_. Cassidy O’Shea.

Arthur catches only a glimpse of a shock of dark curls in the bundle of blankets Abigail was cooing at before Sadie is motioning with her eyes towards the front porch and he follows without question.

“What happened?”

“Turn of events,” Arthur sighs. “No sign of John or Charles?”

“None. But I’m none too worried...”

Arthur hums, watching the empty stretch of road cut through the prairie. He feels Sadie’s eyes on him and he turns to see her searching his face.

“I’m not either,” he lies.

Her eyes narrow a fraction of a second before she nods once and looks back across the plain.

“Tilly, Karen, and I did a little robbin’ of our own.”

“That so?”

“It was little,” Sadie shrugs. “Took us through Harper’s Falls and back...We _heard_ , Arthur. About _them_.”

“What do you think about it?”

“Doesn’t make any damn sense. But not a lot _is_ nowadays, is it?”

They stand for a moment longer in comfortable silence before Sadie reaches in her back pocket and extends a letter in his direction, eyes still on the horizon.

“Picked this up on the way back. Tilly’s idea to check. Just in case.”

Arthur takes the letter, flipping it over and feeling his breath catch.

“Josiah?” Sadie drawls.

“No,” Arthur says. “Hosea.”

* * *

 

 _It was M. For $$$_  
Meet me at our place   
Watch your back

_H._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *google searches how to write a clear and concise action sequence*
> 
> One more(!) chapter of dramatic buildup and then the 💩 hits the fan


	5. Chapter 5

After that whole...

 _Bronte_ ordeal,

Hosea took Arthur away on the premise of another hunt.

 _Don’t stay away too long_ , Dutch had chuckled. _There’s a lot I need to talk about with my best men._

Somewhere in a corner, deep inside Arthur, he wanted to ask Hosea if maybe they should stay after all. Dutch needed them. Needed _him_. Maybe this time would be different. Maybe that was all just a fluke or a brief dip into madness. It happened to each of them at some point.

Hosea clapped a firm hand on Arthur’s shoulder.

“Won’t be more than two days, old friend.”

They went to Van Horn by way of some back road Arthur didn’t know too well. Hitched up just outside of town and walked the rest of the way in.

They rented a room at the hotel, and spent the day walking along the pier and reminiscing on old times, and when night came and they retired back to their room, Hosea nudged Arthur awake from a half minutes sleep and unfurled a map across the foot of his bed.

“We need a plan,” he announced.

“A plan? For what?”

“It’s time.”

“Now?” Arthur hated the hitch in his voice like he hated the seed of doubt that wouldn’t go. _I need my best men_. Or something like that. Arthur may not have been a good man in the grand scheme of things, but to someone he was one of the best. And that counted. Surely it did. Right?

“Now,” Hosea said unfazed, face precariously close to the map and finger tracing a slow line across the bottom. “Do you have your journal? We’ll need to write this down.”

And so it went. Week one through three would be in a five mile radius of Strawberry. If anything transpired, Hosea would write under the pseudonym Hector Marsh.

Week four through six would be spent in Reynolds. If anything transpired, Hosea would write under the pseudonym Henry Moore.

From Reynolds, to Shad River, to Harper’s Fall’s, to Amarillo, to Phoenix, to California...

An entire route planned. Written in the back of both of their journals so Arthur could remember the names to look for, and the map he tucked back into his satchel.

They sat in silence for a long time. The candle on the dresser stretching still and long throwing orange light across the room until Arthur rolled his shoulders, read through the list of places and names again and looked up at Hosea.

“How are you so...” he trailed off, shaking his head. “Calm about this?”

“There are two things in this world, Arthur, that are very important,” Hosea said quietly. “And they both can be gone in a flash if you don’t act quickly. One is love. Unconditional, bloodless, love from people who want the best for you. The other are choices when they are presented. Right now we have a choice.”

Arthur stayed silent.

“If anything happens, this is our place.”

“Okay.”

“Keep that map hidden. And don’t veer off that path unless you have to.”

“We won’t.”

He had found himself waking up sometime later that night to a pitch black room and a boiling feeling under his skin. He slipped out of the hotel and rode as far out as a little stream he happened upon, and paced restlessly until he felt that fiery feeling become little more than a dying ember.

He wasn’t sure where he saw his life headed. No where far maybe. Death always lurked just outside of their little circle, that much was obvious. Maybe he thought he’d die before he actually saw this thing unravel. Before he saw Dutch unravel, and Hosea grow old, and John become a father. And it was there at the bank of this stream that Arthur realized in half amusement and half fear that he hadn’t the slightest clue who he was in all this.

* * *

 

When John and Charles got back to camp, the first thing they did was drop the box of money onto Arthur’s bedroll and dust their hands of it as though it were hot to the touch.

Arthur knew well that money that wasn’t yours wasn’t comfortable to hold, though they had been in their trade of business long enough that it hadn’t mattered any more.

There was something more here.

Arthur looked up from the box and locked eyes with Charles in a silent question.

“Laws on to us,” he said, breath still ragged from the exertion of he and John’s escapade. “They’re some ways away from here, but I don’t know how long it’ll stay that way.”

“Why’d you let those guys go?” John demanded. Or rather it came as a demand. His voice always did lean towards severity, but maybe the question itself, needling Arthur ever since he and Lenny escaped, hit too close to home.

So he nudged the box aside with his foot, poured Charles and John half a cup of coffee each and explained the letter he received the day prior.

“I’m goin’ into Van Horn,” he concluded. “I’ll be awhile.”

“What’s awhile?”

“A day. Maybe two.”

“We cant _sit_ here for that long, Arthur. It’s what Charles was saying—“

“While I’m gone, you all pack up and head on. Keep an eye on Lenny’s leg. Molly’s had the baby, so keep on eye on her too. Keep an eye on everyone, and I’ll catch up when I catch up.”

“I’m coming too,” John said, a stubborn tilt to his chin.

“No. You ain’t. You’re going to split the money among each person here an’ you’re going to do as I say.”

“And then?” Charles asks quietly.

Arthur didn’t have an answer for that.

Yet.

“Two days,” he repeats. Side steps them, and grabs the bag he prepared from the hook near the door.

* * *

 

  
Van Horn, that early in the morning, was near empty. Eerily silent and draped in a fog that had Arthur on edge even when he hitched Luca outside the hotel and found a warm fire and a blessedly quiet clerk awaiting him inside.

“Is there a...” he paused. The names Hosea would use were in his journal back at the cabin, and for the life of him, he couldn’t remember who to ask for.

The clerk, an older woman with sharp eyes behind silver spectacles, watches him flounder, eyebrow raised and a hitch in her mouth that Arthur takes for an unspoken tease.

“Is there a... _gentleman_ here, older, glasses sometimes? Tall?”

“You must be Mr. Kilgore,” she says. “Your friend is out in the back, last I saw. On the patio.”

Arthur nods his thanks and hurries back out the door.

The week before they left, or maybe it was two weeks before they left, Hosea had stopped him as he was going up the stairs to his room. Put a hand on his forearm and fixed him with a look so stern, Arthur felt his eyebrows furrow of their own accordance.

“What’s wrong?”

“When it’s time, you have to be in charge, Arthur. You know that right? This is a serious responsibility.”

They had been discussing it in five minute bouts off an on. Always somewhere shadowy, behind Dutch’s back.

_When it’s time._

_When this is over._

_When we leave._

It all reminded Arthur of a story Dutch had read to he and John when they were both young. About a ship who’s crew mutinied against its captain and the few loyal to him, taking the ship and it’s cargo and settling in Tahiti.

 _Loyalty, boys_ , Dutch had said, _is worth more than any amount of money. You can lose some pocket change and replace it in the same day, but once loyalty is lost, that trust is broken for good..._

“I know,” Arthur replies.

He hadn’t known.

Hosea looks more gaunt than Arthur remembers.

He stands looking across the water, waving smoke from his face, turning his head and removing the cigar from between his lips to give Arthur a tightlipped smile.

He looked... _older_.

Arthur knew all of them did. He wasn’t exactly vain about his looks, taking the new lines fanning from his eyes and mouth in stride. It was inevitable. But there was something about Hosea getting older that seemed off in a way he couldn’t name.

He comes to his side and sighs.

“How’ve you been holdin’ up, old man?”

“Just fine, kid,” Hosea grins around their old nicknames, a genuine one. “I trust Josiah might’ve passed my message along.”

“You told ‘im?”

“Things were getting dicey. I couldn’t write you in confidence but Josiah I trusted. Think he got out of town himself shortly after.”

Well, there was _one_ mystery solved.

“How have you been holding up?” Hosea continues. “And the others?”

“As well as we can. Not too much trouble. Molly had the baby.”

“Did she? Boy or girl?”

“Boy. Cassidy is his name. Healthy and all.”

“I’ve been thinking of her,” Hosea nods, taking a long drag. “How’s John?”

“Mouthy as ever but he’s good. We went robbing the other day with Charles and Lenny. Lenny got shot and we got separated but they got back this morning. I...sent them on ahead. While I came here. Told em I’d catch up with them later.”

Hosea’s eyes dart across his face studiously before he hums, turning back to the water and putting out his smoke on the banister of the patio.

“It was Micah, Arthur.”

A man with a fishing pole walks down the wharf, whistling a tune Arthur’s heard once before but can’t remember quite where now. He watches as he settles down and baits his rod, willing the nausea in his stomach mixed with something akin to anger to subside before asking Hosea the question that’s been prodding him since Newton.

“What happened?”

“Micah sold him out. He sold all of us out but he got paid for selling Dutch out.”

“Ten thousand.”

“Ten thousand,” Hosea murmurs in confirmation.

“He was the fifth. We thought somethin’ happened to one of y’all.”

“That much money, papers are gonna keep your name _clear_ out of print. Javier, Bill, and I got away. Barely. Split up outside Saint Denis and I haven’t heard or seen high or low of them since.”

Arthur swore, spat to his right.

Hosea watched him with that look again.

“So now what?”

“There’s still a price on our heads,” Hosea says softly. And it’s then that Arthur gets it.

Gets why Hosea asked him there, gets why he’s so calm about this.

 _This_ was it.

Not back when Dutch was bedridden. Not when Molly said she was pregnant, or when he caught Arthur on the stairs.

 _Now_.

And as though reading his thoughts, Hosea reaches forward, clapping a firm hand at the junction of his shoulder and neck in that familiar, sure way when they were both young with the world at their fingertips. Arthur full of energy and mischief, Hosea always knowing what to say and do to get him—all of them—out of a scrap...

“It’s time.”

“Hosea...”

“This isn’t goodbye. This is a choice. I’m deciding.”

The fisherman is starting in on a new tune. Arthur can’t place this one. Muffled as it is, fading into a background hum with every other noise in the waking town. He shakes his head. Hosea nods his.

“It’s time,” he repeats.

In all his years, he never thought it would end like this.

With Dutch away for good.

With Hosea and he parting ways for an indefinite amount of time because it wasn’t forever. It would never be forever.

It’s what he told himself as he pushed Luca into a rolling gallop through Harper’s Falls, past the cabin sitting dark and empty as he hoped it would in the purple glow of twilight, on and on and onwards still in the shadows of the rest of the gang where somewhere in a not to distant future, he’d have to tell them.

_You can lose some pocket change and replace it in the same day, but once loyalty is lost, that trust is broken for good._

He shivers, and chases a setting sun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Time skip coming up, let the drama roll


End file.
